He's right. The various "famines" in Africa in the last decade or three are not due to the overall population exceeding the food supply, they're due to localized shortages due to distribution problems, where the distribution problems are primarily political in nature. (Wars or imposed shortages to drive out "undesirable" populations.) Partially right. Just off the top - The Ethiopian famine was set off by an extended drought, made worse by government mismanagement (including the resulting wars). That is the reoccurring theme in the African countries. A drought that causes famine is a situation where there are too many people for the land to sustain.
This is not a debate for Mr. troll to get into though. He'd rather summarily dismiss a remark without offering up data to support his dismissal. Even though the link I sent has examples of all the above, including direct overpopulation relationships. Following the Wikipedia citations gives one additional data. I don't really like Wikipedia as a source, but it frequently is a good place to start.
Really? When was the last famine? Ongoing in Darfur right now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine#Famine_today in Nigeria in 2005 - happens somewhere in Africa every year. I'm surprised someone had to ask.... Or was that sarcastic, and I missed the joke?
Brilliant, let's start with you and yours and all the other who feel like this is a good idea! I did. My wife and I chose to adopt an existing little human rather than create a new one.
Is it reall a valid argument to say "See, the guys that are suing us for breaking the law are breaking the law too?" Doesn't that make both of them guilty, rather than let You Tube off the hook? Personally I think the whole suit thing is more than a little bogus, but it doesn't make sense to me that this argument hold true...
How about we let the cows eat grass like they were intended to? Because you produce more cows per acre when you feed them feed as compared to free roaming the cattle. then here is that little thing about feeding bessy during those Wyoming winters. It's a little difficult for the cows to get to the grass when they have to dig through a few feet of snow.
However, there are producers out there who will supply you with free roaming beef if that's your taste.
If you really want to fix things, start controlling the number of people on the planet. We're eating up resources at a prodigious rate, technology is helping, but not fixing it.
Re:Modding every critical post down.
on
eSATA Connectors
·
· Score: 1
I'm on the fence, I like the SATA connector, don't like the eSATA connector, preferring to use USB or Firewire connections for external drives.
However slashdotting an ecommerce site with an article designed to do nothing more than get a very targeted audience to a location that will sell SATA and eSATA devices is superb. It makes me wonder what the real dollar value of this "news" will translate into.
That's just a little too convoluted a bit of reasoning for me to believe. I'd be more inclined to think "It's a slow news day for the entertainment section, let's do something a bit controversial, and slam an online source in the process.... win-win for us"
Would it be worthwhile for this to go to court to get a ruling on it? Would there be any application to SLA's? it seems like the crux of this issue is whether or not you can enter into a contract blind by opening the website, or something like that. I also wonder about caching - what about networks (AOL for example) that use a caching system/proxy server to provide more efficient data to their users?
I suspect a win for the website owner here would turn a lot of the systems we currently use on it's ear.....
The CEO of the largest software company in the world is Whining about some other Co's hiring rates?
I wonder if this is more telling about a potential waning of MicroSoft than anything else. Or is it that Balmer is still trying to step out of a shadow... Gates has had a number of exceptional sound bytes over the years.... Positive ones. Balmer, not so much.
Why do they oppose Ethanol production in Brazil? I can't imagine why they would believe that continuing to burn fossil fuels and polluting the air is preferable to clearing some rain forest land. Is that a real question? GreenPeace stand at the forefront of the Mighty trinity of Environmental activism: Save the Whales, Rain forest, Earth [from global warming]. These are all popular causes to persue, meaning there is a huge amount of funding available when you are loud on these issues.
That doesn't mean the issues are bad, just the way Greenpeace does it is.
Just for the record, I'm pro animal rights and ANTI- PETA too. It has something to do with fundamentalism. My experience is that fundamentalists leave their brains at the door. It doesn't seem to matter what the fundamentalist is active in; Religion, Environmentalism, politcal activism, Scuba Diving, Windows, Macs, Linux, take your pick.
Greenpeace is an organization dedicated to cultivating and directing environmental fundamentalists....... Don't expect rationality... That doesn't mean they are wrong either. Trading Rainforests for ag land with sugar cane isn't a good trade environmentally. Just because one advocate saving the rain forests and speaks out against trading the acreage for sugar cane plantation doesn't mean they are advocating continued reliance on Petroleum. Not is it necessary to destroy rainforest acreage to generate ethanol. in fact, switching away from petroleum AND saving the rain forests will probably be more beneficial than trading than the either/or proposal you seem to be in favor of.
NO Way! if we stopped consuming HFC we'd end up in total economic collapse! Pepsi and Coke will fall, dragging the New Roman Empire with it....
On the other hand, we could produce a LOT of ethanol from all that unused Corn Syrup..... hmmmmmmm..... I'm off to the patent office...... Later.......
I agree, Actually. Make them pay a real fine, do real damage, make it so that the bad behavior is changed. breaking them up into three or four companies (one that does the OS, another that does Software like Office, and a third for internet services, for example) a few years ago would have sent a real signal. Or the DOJ could have restricted them from competing at all in some areas for some length of time (pulling IE off the market, for example) would have corrected the behavior.
Hell, making them keep to the terms of the results of the suit would have helped. I think the number one reason I support OSS is for this reason. Red Hat isn't going to be able to pull this kind of thing with Linux, people will just move to a new Distro, oh, wait, they did.....
it Depends on HOW the ads are delivered. If I have to deal with ads like I do in the theatre before the Movie, or on a DVD then it's over for me.
I'd accept an ad that is a part of game play.... A billboard for Pepsi as I drive in search of the next pedestrian to run over wouldn't be bad. Or real ads in the stadium just like you'd see if you go to watch a real sporting event.
But there is probably something in between the innocuous and the obnoxious that will be a line for me that goes too far for someone else.
I know that the really good games cost a small (sometimes a large) fortune to produce..... thousands of manhours, artists, programmers, layout people, scripters, a good game can be more complex to produce than a good movie. To make that happen someone has to pay for it. If advertising caps the price of a game, or better yet reduces it, I'd accept some level of in game ads.
If a manufacture, say HP (to stay on topic), devotes resources to the development of a distro that runs perfectly on their hardware, there has to be a payoff. otherwise there is no incentive for HP to devote the resources, nor for the consumer to purchase.
My supposition (and it is an educated guess, no more) is that there is a substantial amount of money involved in third party software pre-installed on a consumer level machine. Based on that guess, I wonder how much money is involved... $10 - $20 or $40.00 US? Is it enough to cover the Windows licensing? If that is the case, where is the incentive to move to Linux? If HP does start collecting money on third party installs, then it gets really interesting. Since they are not paying a license fee for the Linux install, and would be collecting on the TPC (Third Party Crap) the price of the machine could be driven down to the point where it competes VERY effectively with windows. My observation is that consumers of PC's, as a whole, are price shopping far more than most of us give them credit for. A Linux machine that does what they want, for $300.00 will outsell a $400.00 windows machine of equal performance.
I don't think the "feature" set or performance set is nearly as important.... When Apple introduced the PPC G4 series of machines it was easily a faster machine with a larger feature set as the same class of windows machine. At that point windows was still playing catchup with features in the OS, with "snappiness" of response, and so forth. because Apple equipment was percieved as being more expensive (generally speaking, they were, ROI and ancillary costs (IT support, training, etc.) might have been lower overall, doesn't matter. the price tag to take it off the box out of the store was less, or perceived to be less. So, Macs did NOT make much in the way of inroads anywhere (well, except for video editing houses, We LOVED final Cut Pro when it came out, and love it more now...) and, in fact, lost market share (or grew market share slower than the rest of the industry, same difference).
Linux has the opportunity to fix that perceived price tag, since the software costs less to install, maybe. there is always that other side of the marketing coin... the one no-one talks about, because it's a closed door deal: Third party installs. If the manufacturer is getting fees for installing the software, it's possible that the Windows license is off set or actually fully paid for with a small profit. "Free" software that is a net zero dollars might not be a plus in that case, and it would be a logical reason that the hardware is more expensive with Linux or with no software.
Sure, but what about the "grey" area of: it's not libel or slander, but it does violate the personal privacy of the the object. These aren't "public" persona's, after all.
Personally, I'd lose the anonymity of the writer aspect of it, and leave it alone. Free speech is one thing, but if you are going to write it, you should be held accountable for what you say (ummm... Write).
But too address the original commentary, free speech in and of itself doesn't go too far, but there are always people who will abuse a system, the more free the system, the more likely the abuse, it's just human nature, there is always someone out there with ethics and/or morals that don't meet the basic set of expectations that idealists seem to have.
That was the puzzle piece the Linux commnity needed.
I'm wondering if Hp figured out how to preinstall AOL, and all the rest of that junk for advertising like the Windows machines come pre-installed with to supplement income. It occurred to me that windows machines might actually be cheaper, not because of the windows deals with MS, but because of the paid to be installed junk. If so, that may not be nearly as nice as it first appears.
No it is no where near an abuse of monopoly not to list someone on your search service. Google is a private company and is fully allowed to customize its survice as it sees fit. If google feels that having a company listed will detract from google's customers' overall satisfaction they are perfectly allowed to do as they please. Don't give me anymore of this monopoly bs. Take your remark, substitute "Microsoft" or "Apple"
So, it's okay, by your reasoning, for Microsoft to say "No, your game/software/document type is not allowed on Windows". Or Apple to do the same?
We are having an overabundance of silly commentary for this article.....And no, I'm not new here.....
MS says these things when they are well known in and out of the industry for their large amounts of theft and patent/copyright abuse Well known = Your biased Opinion.... Just because his biased opinion happens to be Well known doe not mean it's false. There are numerous examples to back up his assertion, Many of which others have commented on already, so I won't bother being repeating what has already been said. But, simply the number of class action lawsuits that the largest software company in the world has lost over the last 10 years should imply something to you, unless you are a complete idiot.
I don't understand you fanboi's, a platform is a tool. The corporations/people/communitys that promote those tools do so for a variety of reasons, in a variety of ways, good and bad. But there is no threat to your ego when someone points out the flaws and mistakes made by MicroSoft, Apple, or whoever is your flavor of the month. it's pointing out the flaws, hopefully to improve the world a little.
MS has always paid rather well to companies they acquire technology from, and in terms of literature or artwork, again they pay well for the content. Look up Gates and buying digital artwork. Gates has a huge, wonderful charity too. He isn't a bad man, nor is Microsoft a bad company per se. They do play hardball and cross ethical boundaries whenever they think they can, for example, when they decide that paying the fine is cheaper than changing a business practice. Again - it's easy to find references to prove the point, but I suspect the little bit of work to do so would be lost on you. Fanatical personalities are like that.
Just because you believe myth, does not make it reality. "Just because you believe myth, does not make it reality." good quote - read it - understand it - live it. it applies even when you create your own myth.
In my opinion, all NASA needs to do is present congress with a scientific statistic claim with percent confidence of global destruction. If we have craters on our planet & there are bones of things that shouldn't have died lying all around, I'm guessing they could place something like a 1% chance of a decent sized asteroid hitting us within a couple thousand years. Given that information, $1 billion may not seem like a bad idea considering most of us employ smoke detectors with even less risk of harm/loss to us. But when you present that evidence we are in for 20 years of conservatives and their paid "scientists" denying that Asteroids exist, then when the existence of asteroids is irrefutable, they'll deny that we'll ever get hit, then they'll deny that humans can do anything about it.....
Slashdot Mirror
This is not a debate for Mr. troll to get into though. He'd rather summarily dismiss a remark without offering up data to support his dismissal. Even though the link I sent has examples of all the above, including direct overpopulation relationships. Following the Wikipedia citations gives one additional data. I don't really like Wikipedia as a source, but it frequently is a good place to start.
Got any examples of famines that are caused by overpopulation? Do you have any data to back up your summary dismissal? Or are you trolling?
Is it reall a valid argument to say "See, the guys that are suing us for breaking the law are breaking the law too?" Doesn't that make both of them guilty, rather than let You Tube off the hook? Personally I think the whole suit thing is more than a little bogus, but it doesn't make sense to me that this argument hold true...
However, there are producers out there who will supply you with free roaming beef if that's your taste.
If you really want to fix things, start controlling the number of people on the planet. We're eating up resources at a prodigious rate, technology is helping, but not fixing it.
You're new here, aren't you?
I'm on the fence, I like the SATA connector, don't like the eSATA connector, preferring to use USB or Firewire connections for external drives.
However slashdotting an ecommerce site with an article designed to do nothing more than get a very targeted audience to a location that will sell SATA and eSATA devices is superb. It makes me wonder what the real dollar value of this "news" will translate into.
You must mean the old tale of the ant, the grasshoper and the squirrel.
I think it's the moral of the story about the Pimp, the Crack Dealer, and a game of Three card MonteExcept that I note that the patent was ISSUED in April of 2006!
Takes idiocy to a whole new level, and thrusts it into the hands of the freeking Patent office.
That's just a little too convoluted a bit of reasoning for me to believe. I'd be more inclined to think "It's a slow news day for the entertainment section, let's do something a bit controversial, and slam an online source in the process.... win-win for us"
Would it be worthwhile for this to go to court to get a ruling on it? Would there be any application to SLA's? it seems like the crux of this issue is whether or not you can enter into a contract blind by opening the website, or something like that. I also wonder about caching - what about networks (AOL for example) that use a caching system/proxy server to provide more efficient data to their users?
I suspect a win for the website owner here would turn a lot of the systems we currently use on it's ear.....
The CEO of the largest software company in the world is Whining about some other Co's hiring rates?
I wonder if this is more telling about a potential waning of MicroSoft than anything else. Or is it that Balmer is still trying to step out of a shadow... Gates has had a number of exceptional sound bytes over the years.... Positive ones. Balmer, not so much.
That doesn't mean the issues are bad, just the way Greenpeace does it is.
Just for the record, I'm pro animal rights and ANTI- PETA too. It has something to do with fundamentalism. My experience is that fundamentalists leave their brains at the door. It doesn't seem to matter what the fundamentalist is active in; Religion, Environmentalism, politcal activism, Scuba Diving, Windows, Macs, Linux, take your pick.
Greenpeace is an organization dedicated to cultivating and directing environmental fundamentalists....... Don't expect rationality... That doesn't mean they are wrong either. Trading Rainforests for ag land with sugar cane isn't a good trade environmentally. Just because one advocate saving the rain forests and speaks out against trading the acreage for sugar cane plantation doesn't mean they are advocating continued reliance on Petroleum. Not is it necessary to destroy rainforest acreage to generate ethanol. in fact, switching away from petroleum AND saving the rain forests will probably be more beneficial than trading than the either/or proposal you seem to be in favor of.
NO Way! if we stopped consuming HFC we'd end up in total economic collapse! Pepsi and Coke will fall, dragging the New Roman Empire with it....
On the other hand, we could produce a LOT of ethanol from all that unused Corn Syrup..... hmmmmmmm..... I'm off to the patent office...... Later.......
I agree, Actually. Make them pay a real fine, do real damage, make it so that the bad behavior is changed. breaking them up into three or four companies (one that does the OS, another that does Software like Office, and a third for internet services, for example) a few years ago would have sent a real signal. Or the DOJ could have restricted them from competing at all in some areas for some length of time (pulling IE off the market, for example) would have corrected the behavior.
Hell, making them keep to the terms of the results of the suit would have helped. I think the number one reason I support OSS is for this reason. Red Hat isn't going to be able to pull this kind of thing with Linux, people will just move to a new Distro, oh, wait, they did.....
it Depends on HOW the ads are delivered. If I have to deal with ads like I do in the theatre before the Movie, or on a DVD then it's over for me.
I'd accept an ad that is a part of game play.... A billboard for Pepsi as I drive in search of the next pedestrian to run over wouldn't be bad. Or real ads in the stadium just like you'd see if you go to watch a real sporting event.
But there is probably something in between the innocuous and the obnoxious that will be a line for me that goes too far for someone else.
I know that the really good games cost a small (sometimes a large) fortune to produce..... thousands of manhours, artists, programmers, layout people, scripters, a good game can be more complex to produce than a good movie. To make that happen someone has to pay for it. If advertising caps the price of a game, or better yet reduces it, I'd accept some level of in game ads.
but, there is still that bottom line thing.
If a manufacture, say HP (to stay on topic), devotes resources to the development of a distro that runs perfectly on their hardware, there has to be a payoff. otherwise there is no incentive for HP to devote the resources, nor for the consumer to purchase.
My supposition (and it is an educated guess, no more) is that there is a substantial amount of money involved in third party software pre-installed on a consumer level machine. Based on that guess, I wonder how much money is involved... $10 - $20 or $40.00 US? Is it enough to cover the Windows licensing? If that is the case, where is the incentive to move to Linux? If HP does start collecting money on third party installs, then it gets really interesting. Since they are not paying a license fee for the Linux install, and would be collecting on the TPC (Third Party Crap) the price of the machine could be driven down to the point where it competes VERY effectively with windows. My observation is that consumers of PC's, as a whole, are price shopping far more than most of us give them credit for. A Linux machine that does what they want, for $300.00 will outsell a $400.00 windows machine of equal performance.
I don't think the "feature" set or performance set is nearly as important.... When Apple introduced the PPC G4 series of machines it was easily a faster machine with a larger feature set as the same class of windows machine. At that point windows was still playing catchup with features in the OS, with "snappiness" of response, and so forth. because Apple equipment was percieved as being more expensive (generally speaking, they were, ROI and ancillary costs (IT support, training, etc.) might have been lower overall, doesn't matter. the price tag to take it off the box out of the store was less, or perceived to be less. So, Macs did NOT make much in the way of inroads anywhere (well, except for video editing houses, We LOVED final Cut Pro when it came out, and love it more now...) and, in fact, lost market share (or grew market share slower than the rest of the industry, same difference).
Linux has the opportunity to fix that perceived price tag, since the software costs less to install, maybe. there is always that other side of the marketing coin... the one no-one talks about, because it's a closed door deal: Third party installs. If the manufacturer is getting fees for installing the software, it's possible that the Windows license is off set or actually fully paid for with a small profit. "Free" software that is a net zero dollars might not be a plus in that case, and it would be a logical reason that the hardware is more expensive with Linux or with no software.
Sure, but what about the "grey" area of: it's not libel or slander, but it does violate the personal privacy of the the object. These aren't "public" persona's, after all.
Personally, I'd lose the anonymity of the writer aspect of it, and leave it alone. Free speech is one thing, but if you are going to write it, you should be held accountable for what you say (ummm... Write).
But too address the original commentary, free speech in and of itself doesn't go too far, but there are always people who will abuse a system, the more free the system, the more likely the abuse, it's just human nature, there is always someone out there with ethics and/or morals that don't meet the basic set of expectations that idealists seem to have.
That was the puzzle piece the Linux commnity needed.
I'm wondering if Hp figured out how to preinstall AOL, and all the rest of that junk for advertising like the Windows machines come pre-installed with to supplement income. It occurred to me that windows machines might actually be cheaper, not because of the windows deals with MS, but because of the paid to be installed junk. If so, that may not be nearly as nice as it first appears.
Other than being a turkey, how does this diatribe about the American VP apply to the Turkey censors YouTube article?
that's MP-2, not MP3 (or mpeg 1 layer 3) Lucent and Microsoft are wrangling over VIDEO
So, it's okay, by your reasoning, for Microsoft to say "No, your game/software/document type is not allowed on Windows". Or Apple to do the same?
We are having an overabundance of silly commentary for this article.....And no, I'm not new here.....
Well known = Your biased Opinion.... Just because his biased opinion happens to be Well known doe not mean it's false. There are numerous examples to back up his assertion, Many of which others have commented on already, so I won't bother being repeating what has already been said. But, simply the number of class action lawsuits that the largest software company in the world has lost over the last 10 years should imply something to you, unless you are a complete idiot.
I don't understand you fanboi's, a platform is a tool. The corporations/people/communitys that promote those tools do so for a variety of reasons, in a variety of ways, good and bad. But there is no threat to your ego when someone points out the flaws and mistakes made by MicroSoft, Apple, or whoever is your flavor of the month. it's pointing out the flaws, hopefully to improve the world a little. MS has always paid rather well to companies they acquire technology from, and in terms of literature or artwork, again they pay well for the content. Look up Gates and buying digital artwork. Gates has a huge, wonderful charity too. He isn't a bad man, nor is Microsoft a bad company per se. They do play hardball and cross ethical boundaries whenever they think they can, for example, when they decide that paying the fine is cheaper than changing a business practice. Again - it's easy to find references to prove the point, but I suspect the little bit of work to do so would be lost on you. Fanatical personalities are like that. Just because you believe myth, does not make it reality. "Just because you believe myth, does not make it reality." good quote - read it - understand it - live it. it applies even when you create your own myth.
[sigh]